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Jonathan Moore I Daily Trojan
Another world. Ann Norris, legislative assistant and a representative from Sen. Barbara Boxer's office, tests “Virtual Iraq,” a virtual reality program that hopes to reduce post-traumatic stress disorder in soldiers.
USC creates
The game is designed to help soldiers with post-traumatic stress disorder.
By JACQUELINE LEE
Staff Writer
As the Iraq war enters its 41st month, the clinical version 1.4 of “Virtual Iraq,” a new virtual reality video game created by a USC research team, is in its trial stages to qualify as a tool for exposure therapy.
The research team, led by professor and clinical psychologist Dr. Albert “Skip” Rizzo and working in conjunction with USC’s Institute for Creative Technologies, envisions this virtual reality approach to one day aid soldiers coming home from Iraq who are diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.
“What our mission is here is to drag psychology kicking and screaming into the 21st century and come up with ways that psychologists, whether it’s for research or for clini-
“Virtual Iraq”
cal practice, can use some of this technology to make their job better,” Rizzo said. “We build simulation for everyday life. Why not use it for good human purposes? Assess and rehabilitate, or measure and treat, all matters of human functioning?”
Rizzo became interested in the possibility of utilizing virtual reality as a therapeutic tool in 2003 when he first came across “Full Spectrum Warrior” on USC’s Institute for Creative Technologies Web site.
Rizzo hopes to keep the costs of the tool to a minimum so that it will be accessible to as many people as possible.
“I looked at a video clip that they had on the Web site, and as I was looking at it, 1 thought, ‘Geez. this is an ideal environment that we could adapt for doing the kind of treatment that we would like to do for PTSD with returning soldiers from the Iraq conflict,” Rizzo said.
It was difficult for Rizzo to find funding for the research three years ago.
“The thing was, at that time, we were in that era of mission
for soldiers
accomplished,” he said. “You know, with Bush on the battleship and the aircraft carrier. Nobody was thinking in terms of, ‘Oh, we may have to deal with mental health issues with returning soldiers.’ So it was a hard sell at that time.”
The Office of Naval Research then agreed to fund Rizzo’s “Virtual Iraq” proposal when “things started to go bad, more tough, and there was more recognition that this wasn't going to be a quick in-and-out surgical procedure in Iraq, and there were going to be people who are traumatized by their experience in that situation," he said.
Last week, Rizzo and his team pitched their virtual reality project to a representative from Sen. Barbara Boxer’s office in hopes of gaining further support and funding from the government.
The senator’s office was interested in Rizzo’s research regarding a possible virtual reality educational tool for family members of Iraq veterans to understand what veterans are experiencing upon returning home.
I see Virtual, page 3 I
DULY Ml
Student Newspaper of the University of Southern California Since 1912
.dailytrojan.com
August 23, 2006
Vol. CXLX, No. 3
USC sues hospital ownership
USC seeks to restore ownership of USC University Hospital, currently owned by a subsidiary of Tenet Healthcare Corp.
By MAXIMILLIAN DEL REY
Staff Writer
USC filed suit in Los Angeles Superior Court on Tuesday against a subsidiary of Tenet Healthcare Corp., a Dallas-based company that owns USC University Hospital, a 269-bed research and teaching hospital located on USC’s Health Sciences Campus.
“USC seeks by this action to restore ownership and control of the hospital bearing USC’s name to itself for the public good,” the complaint stated.
Tenet has a lease with USC to use the land upon which the hospital complex is built USC’s lawsuit hopes to break the
lease, which would enable USC to purchase the building from Tenet.
According to the complaint, the university alleges Tenet violated the “Event of Default” clause of its lease with USC. USC has a right to terminate the lease with Tenet if “by virtue of governmental or regulatory action (Tenet’s) right to manage and operate (USCUH) is ... substantially altered or varied,” the complaint stated.
The university alleges that the hospital has been adversely affected by the conduct of Tenet, which in June settled with the Department of Justice to pay a $900 million settlement to cover fraudulent Medicare “outlier” payments
— costs associated with treating the most gravely ill patients.
On June 30, the Los Angeles Times reported that Tenet would sell 11 of its remaining 68 hospitals to help cover the cost of the $900 million settlement. This fire sale comes two-and-a-half years after Tenet sold 27 of its 96 hospitals “to concentrate on the USC University Hospital and other core facilities. The goal: to develop long-term growth and stability,” USC said in a January 2004 statement.
Since 2002, Tenet Healthcare has been investigated by six federal agencies, including the DOJ, the Department of Health and Human Services and the Internal Revenue Service. The $900 million settlement was in response to the DOJ’s conclusion that Tenet had siphoned more than $1 billion in excess
outlier payments from Medicare since 2000, the complaint stated.
The complaint also lists other investigations of Tenet, including an October 2002 investigation that concluded that a Tenet facility in Redding, Calif., had performed unnecessarily invasive cardiac procedures. Tenet paid $54 million to the federal government and state of California in fines for the incidents and agreed to establish a $395 million settlement fund by Dec. 31,2004, to settle the related civil claims.
In January 2003, the DOJ alleged that Tenet had “upcoded” — the process of falsifying diagnosis codes to receive greater reimbursement — on 19,300 claims from 1992 to 1998 and collected as much as $115 million in undeserved Medicare revenue. Tenet
I see Tenet, page 6 I
WEATHER
Today: Tomorrow:
Sunny. High Sunny. High
89, low 69. 87, low 67.
INSIDE
Hookah is no longer reserved for the Westwood crowd with a new bar on Hoover. 7
Students paid to pipe down
Grease fire burns Century room
By CARLEY DRYDEN
Staff Writer
Event planners paid music students to leave popular outdoor practice area.
By VENUS LEE
Staff Writer
A grease fire broke out in Room 345 of Century 2 Apartments at about 8:30 p.m. Tuesday night.
Pablo Rincon, a freshman majoring in mechanical engineering and one of the apartment’s four tenants, was in the apartment preheating the oven to make a pizza, when smoke began to flood from the oven.
“Once it started smoking I took off the hand towels (from the front of the oven) because I thought they were on fire, but then I looked at the bottom of the oven and it was flaming,” Rincon said.
No one was injured and the room sustained only minor damage.
As smoke began to fill the hallway, Rincon ran to get his resident adviser, but he was out with the rest of the floor at dinner.
He then called DPS and another resident on the floor pulled the fire alarm.
Rincon’s roommate John Parks, a freshman majoring in health promotion and disease prevention, was in the shower when the fire broke out.
“I jumped out of the shower, grabbed a towel and we evacuated,” Parks said.
At least three fire trucks responded to the scene.
“It was a grease fire in the broiler that filled the room and hallway with smoke,” said Adin Waldrep, a firefighter with Engine Co. 15 who put out the fire.
Waldrep said it took only a few minutes to put the fire out.
Rincon said his RA guaranteed that the whole unit of oven and stove, which are currently charred, will be replaced.
INDEX
Pete Carroll knows how to avoid controversy. 16
Maurice Clarettprovides college students a life lesson. 4
News Digest........2 Classifieds.........12
Opinions..............4 Crossword........14
Lifestyle...............7 Sports................16
An event-planning company hired by General Motors Corporation distributed free cash to several USC students Monday afternoon in return for peace and quiet during the automo-( tive company’s media presentation.
Several students said Anne Galsterer, a representative for Morley Companies, Inc., offered them cash on the spot to not play their musical instruments in the popular outdoor practice area between Heritage Hall and the Music Practice and Instructional Center from 2 p.m. to
3 p.m.
“It was the first time I was paid to not play my instrument,” said David McLemore, a sophomore tuba performance major who frequently practices outside.
Representatives from Morley and GMC declined to comment on the number of students paid, the amount of cash distributed and the original source of the money.
At least five students, .however, reported receiving anywhere from $10 to $20 each and seeing several others offered the same amount.
McLemore said Galsterer apologized for the inconvenience and said he could return to the popular out-■ door practice area between 3:30 p.m. and 4:30 p.m.
Most students said they did not have a problem with Galsterer’s request and would have complied without the cash incentive, but they were not about to pass up the opportunity to turn an easy profit.
By 2:50 p.m., the hallways in the music practice building were abuzz with students discussing the opportunity to make some easy cash.
Some students said they sent their friends to the outdoor practice area with instruments they did not know
I see Paid, page 2 I

Jonathan Moore I Daily Trojan
Another world. Ann Norris, legislative assistant and a representative from Sen. Barbara Boxer's office, tests “Virtual Iraq,” a virtual reality program that hopes to reduce post-traumatic stress disorder in soldiers.
USC creates
The game is designed to help soldiers with post-traumatic stress disorder.
By JACQUELINE LEE
Staff Writer
As the Iraq war enters its 41st month, the clinical version 1.4 of “Virtual Iraq,” a new virtual reality video game created by a USC research team, is in its trial stages to qualify as a tool for exposure therapy.
The research team, led by professor and clinical psychologist Dr. Albert “Skip” Rizzo and working in conjunction with USC’s Institute for Creative Technologies, envisions this virtual reality approach to one day aid soldiers coming home from Iraq who are diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.
“What our mission is here is to drag psychology kicking and screaming into the 21st century and come up with ways that psychologists, whether it’s for research or for clini-
“Virtual Iraq”
cal practice, can use some of this technology to make their job better,” Rizzo said. “We build simulation for everyday life. Why not use it for good human purposes? Assess and rehabilitate, or measure and treat, all matters of human functioning?”
Rizzo became interested in the possibility of utilizing virtual reality as a therapeutic tool in 2003 when he first came across “Full Spectrum Warrior” on USC’s Institute for Creative Technologies Web site.
Rizzo hopes to keep the costs of the tool to a minimum so that it will be accessible to as many people as possible.
“I looked at a video clip that they had on the Web site, and as I was looking at it, 1 thought, ‘Geez. this is an ideal environment that we could adapt for doing the kind of treatment that we would like to do for PTSD with returning soldiers from the Iraq conflict,” Rizzo said.
It was difficult for Rizzo to find funding for the research three years ago.
“The thing was, at that time, we were in that era of mission
for soldiers
accomplished,” he said. “You know, with Bush on the battleship and the aircraft carrier. Nobody was thinking in terms of, ‘Oh, we may have to deal with mental health issues with returning soldiers.’ So it was a hard sell at that time.”
The Office of Naval Research then agreed to fund Rizzo’s “Virtual Iraq” proposal when “things started to go bad, more tough, and there was more recognition that this wasn't going to be a quick in-and-out surgical procedure in Iraq, and there were going to be people who are traumatized by their experience in that situation," he said.
Last week, Rizzo and his team pitched their virtual reality project to a representative from Sen. Barbara Boxer’s office in hopes of gaining further support and funding from the government.
The senator’s office was interested in Rizzo’s research regarding a possible virtual reality educational tool for family members of Iraq veterans to understand what veterans are experiencing upon returning home.
I see Virtual, page 3 I
DULY Ml
Student Newspaper of the University of Southern California Since 1912
.dailytrojan.com
August 23, 2006
Vol. CXLX, No. 3
USC sues hospital ownership
USC seeks to restore ownership of USC University Hospital, currently owned by a subsidiary of Tenet Healthcare Corp.
By MAXIMILLIAN DEL REY
Staff Writer
USC filed suit in Los Angeles Superior Court on Tuesday against a subsidiary of Tenet Healthcare Corp., a Dallas-based company that owns USC University Hospital, a 269-bed research and teaching hospital located on USC’s Health Sciences Campus.
“USC seeks by this action to restore ownership and control of the hospital bearing USC’s name to itself for the public good,” the complaint stated.
Tenet has a lease with USC to use the land upon which the hospital complex is built USC’s lawsuit hopes to break the
lease, which would enable USC to purchase the building from Tenet.
According to the complaint, the university alleges Tenet violated the “Event of Default” clause of its lease with USC. USC has a right to terminate the lease with Tenet if “by virtue of governmental or regulatory action (Tenet’s) right to manage and operate (USCUH) is ... substantially altered or varied,” the complaint stated.
The university alleges that the hospital has been adversely affected by the conduct of Tenet, which in June settled with the Department of Justice to pay a $900 million settlement to cover fraudulent Medicare “outlier” payments
— costs associated with treating the most gravely ill patients.
On June 30, the Los Angeles Times reported that Tenet would sell 11 of its remaining 68 hospitals to help cover the cost of the $900 million settlement. This fire sale comes two-and-a-half years after Tenet sold 27 of its 96 hospitals “to concentrate on the USC University Hospital and other core facilities. The goal: to develop long-term growth and stability,” USC said in a January 2004 statement.
Since 2002, Tenet Healthcare has been investigated by six federal agencies, including the DOJ, the Department of Health and Human Services and the Internal Revenue Service. The $900 million settlement was in response to the DOJ’s conclusion that Tenet had siphoned more than $1 billion in excess
outlier payments from Medicare since 2000, the complaint stated.
The complaint also lists other investigations of Tenet, including an October 2002 investigation that concluded that a Tenet facility in Redding, Calif., had performed unnecessarily invasive cardiac procedures. Tenet paid $54 million to the federal government and state of California in fines for the incidents and agreed to establish a $395 million settlement fund by Dec. 31,2004, to settle the related civil claims.
In January 2003, the DOJ alleged that Tenet had “upcoded” — the process of falsifying diagnosis codes to receive greater reimbursement — on 19,300 claims from 1992 to 1998 and collected as much as $115 million in undeserved Medicare revenue. Tenet
I see Tenet, page 6 I
WEATHER
Today: Tomorrow:
Sunny. High Sunny. High
89, low 69. 87, low 67.
INSIDE
Hookah is no longer reserved for the Westwood crowd with a new bar on Hoover. 7
Students paid to pipe down
Grease fire burns Century room
By CARLEY DRYDEN
Staff Writer
Event planners paid music students to leave popular outdoor practice area.
By VENUS LEE
Staff Writer
A grease fire broke out in Room 345 of Century 2 Apartments at about 8:30 p.m. Tuesday night.
Pablo Rincon, a freshman majoring in mechanical engineering and one of the apartment’s four tenants, was in the apartment preheating the oven to make a pizza, when smoke began to flood from the oven.
“Once it started smoking I took off the hand towels (from the front of the oven) because I thought they were on fire, but then I looked at the bottom of the oven and it was flaming,” Rincon said.
No one was injured and the room sustained only minor damage.
As smoke began to fill the hallway, Rincon ran to get his resident adviser, but he was out with the rest of the floor at dinner.
He then called DPS and another resident on the floor pulled the fire alarm.
Rincon’s roommate John Parks, a freshman majoring in health promotion and disease prevention, was in the shower when the fire broke out.
“I jumped out of the shower, grabbed a towel and we evacuated,” Parks said.
At least three fire trucks responded to the scene.
“It was a grease fire in the broiler that filled the room and hallway with smoke,” said Adin Waldrep, a firefighter with Engine Co. 15 who put out the fire.
Waldrep said it took only a few minutes to put the fire out.
Rincon said his RA guaranteed that the whole unit of oven and stove, which are currently charred, will be replaced.
INDEX
Pete Carroll knows how to avoid controversy. 16
Maurice Clarettprovides college students a life lesson. 4
News Digest........2 Classifieds.........12
Opinions..............4 Crossword........14
Lifestyle...............7 Sports................16
An event-planning company hired by General Motors Corporation distributed free cash to several USC students Monday afternoon in return for peace and quiet during the automo-( tive company’s media presentation.
Several students said Anne Galsterer, a representative for Morley Companies, Inc., offered them cash on the spot to not play their musical instruments in the popular outdoor practice area between Heritage Hall and the Music Practice and Instructional Center from 2 p.m. to
3 p.m.
“It was the first time I was paid to not play my instrument,” said David McLemore, a sophomore tuba performance major who frequently practices outside.
Representatives from Morley and GMC declined to comment on the number of students paid, the amount of cash distributed and the original source of the money.
At least five students, .however, reported receiving anywhere from $10 to $20 each and seeing several others offered the same amount.
McLemore said Galsterer apologized for the inconvenience and said he could return to the popular out-■ door practice area between 3:30 p.m. and 4:30 p.m.
Most students said they did not have a problem with Galsterer’s request and would have complied without the cash incentive, but they were not about to pass up the opportunity to turn an easy profit.
By 2:50 p.m., the hallways in the music practice building were abuzz with students discussing the opportunity to make some easy cash.
Some students said they sent their friends to the outdoor practice area with instruments they did not know
I see Paid, page 2 I